Elephants Without Borders will lead the Great Elephant Census, the largest pan-Africa aerial survey that will generate data critical to the species’ survival. Responding to the highest rate of elephant mortality in history, investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen is advancing a major elephant conservation initiative in Africa to provide new information.

Remember that scene from Jurassic Park when the two paleontologists see the herds of living dinosaurs for the first time? Their eyes widen in disbelief, mouths agape, unable to speak. Richard Carroll, vice president for Africa at WWF in Washington, describes when he felt that sensation: with the forest elephants in the Central African Republic.

Cameroon has decided to mobilize over 600 soldiers and a helicopter of its elite Bataillon d´intervention rapide (BIR – Rapid Intervention Battalion) to stop poachers from entering its territory to kill elephants for their ivory.

Although the latest figures have yet to be published, Secretary-General John Scanlon of CITES already reports the illegal killings of elephants in Africa is likely to run into tens of thousands in 2011. At the ongoing rate, according to Scanlon, illegal activities are pushing the species to extinction.

It was a complete surprise for the employees of the Sun International Falls Resort to find a wounded baby elephant by their fence. The little one had a nasty cut on its back, probably due to poaching activities.

Images of tigers and elephants are among the most common threatened mammals used by conservation organisations as ‘flagships’ to promote fundraising. Because of the campaigns they get the most money, but a new study shows they are not the most threatened.

On May 1 conservationists Ian McCallum and Ian Michler will start a journey which takes them 5000 kilometers trough six countries in Southern Africa. They are travelling in the “Tracks of Giants”, to attract attention to the environment and the animals and people in it.

At least 50 per cent of the elephant population of Cameroon’s Bouba Ndjida National Park is dead, says IFAW, the International Fund for Animal Welfare . They have been killed in a bloody poaching spree by horseback bandits. [Lees meer…]

Environmental crime such as ivory poaching and illegal logging has become “a form of serious, organised and often transnational crime”, Interpol’s executive director of police services told an international law enforcement summit.